“You’re talking crazy talk.”
“I could give them a call right now if you’d like. Invite them over to—” He stopped midsentence, his nose in the air. “What’s that I smell?” he asked.
“That’s chocolate-chip banana bread,” she said. “I just took it out of the oven.”
Duckworth gave her his warmest smile. “My God, that smells wonderful. I have this theory that when you arrive in heaven, the first thing you smell will be something like that.”
“I make it whenever I’ve got a lot of old bananas that are too ripe to eat. But you mush them all up and bake ’em and they’re good to eat.”
“My mother used to do that. She’d even put black bananas in the freezer until she got around to making banana bread.”
“I do that, too.” Anxiously, she said, “This business with the fire inspection. I’m pretty up to code here, smoke detectors and all that. There’s no need for them to come in here and get their shorts all in a knot about little picky things.”
“They can be picky,” Duckworth said. “I suppose we could talk about it over some of that banana bread.”
The woman gave him a withering look, sighed, and opened the door wide.
“You don’t even have to tell me where your kitchen is,” he said. “I can follow the scent, like a dog chasing down a rabbit.”
Seconds later he was parked at the woman’s small kitchen table.
“This is asking a lot,” Duckworth said, “but would you mind cutting me off an end piece? Where it’s crustier? It’s never better than when it’s still warm.”
Mrs. Selfridge obliged. She cut him a slice off the end, and one more, set it on a chipped pale green plate, and placed it in front of him.
“You want it buttered?” she asked.
“No, no, that’s fine,” Duckworth said. “I’m trying to cut back.”
“You want milk with it?” she asked. “That’s the way my Leonard would have it. And I got a splash of coffee left in the pot if you’d like that.”
“Coffee’d be just fine,” he said. She set a mug in front of him and sat down. Watched him bite into the end piece.
“Dear God,” he said. “That’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” she said. She paused, then asked, “So what is it you want to know about Sarita?”
Duckworth held up a hand. “Nothing just yet.” He took another bite of banana bread, then sipped his coffee. “I really needed this. And I don’t even feel guilty, because I haven’t had any other treats today.”
“You trying to lose weight? I’m not saying you should. I’m just asking.”
He nodded. “I could stand to lose a few. But it’s hard when you love to eat.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. “Some days I look down and wonder where my feet is.”
Duckworth laughed. “Aren’t we entitled to a little pleasure in life? And if good food gives us pleasure, can we not be forgiven for enjoying it?”
Mrs. Selfridge nodded slowly, rested her hands on the table.
“And I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Today is twenty years.”
“You’ve been married twenty years?”
He shook his head. “Twenty years with the police. It’s my anniversary today.”
“Well, congratulations. They do something special for you today at the police station?”
“Not one damn thing,” Duckworth said, taking another bite.
The woman watched him eat. She said, “I don’t know where she’s gone.”
“Hmm?” the detective said, like he’d forgotten why he was here.
“Sarita. I don’t know where she’s at.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Yesterday. Late afternoon.”
“What’s her name? Her last name?”
“Gomez. Sarita Gomez.”
“And she rents a room here from you.”
“Yeah.”
“Does she live here alone?”
The woman nodded.
“Since when?”
“She’s been renting from me going on three years now. Never a speck of trouble from her. She’s a good girl.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-six? Seven? Something like that. She makes money and sends it home to help her family.”
“Her family where?”
“Mexico, I think. Don’t know where exactly. It’s never been any of my business. But she told me that much.”
“You know how she makes a living?”
“She did some work looking after some lady’s baby, and she also did shifts at a nursing home or two, I think. She couldn’t afford a cell phone, so I always let her use mine, just so long as she didn’t run up long-distance charges to Mexico on it.”
“You know which nursing home?”
Mrs. Selfridge shook her head. “Beats me. But the people she did nannying for are named Gaynor. Lady’s name is Rosemary. But I don’t know much more than that. But Sarita must have had a shift yesterday, ’cause she was dressed for it. In like a nurse’s uniform.”
“And tell me about yesterday. The last time you saw her.”
“I heard the front door open real hard and then running up the stairs. Her room’s right over mine and I could hear her banging about, so I went up to see and she was stuffing some things into a suitcase. I says, ‘What’s up?’ And she says she’s going away.”
“Going away where?”
“She didn’t say.”
“She say for how long?”
Mrs. Selfridge shook her head. “But she didn’t say she was giving up the apartment or anything. But I’ll tell you this, she was rattled pretty good.”
“Did she say why?”
“Nope. But I says to her, ‘You okay? You’ve got some blood on your sleeve there.’ And she looks at it and starts taking her uniform off and putting on something else and she’s running around like a chicken with its head cut off, right? And she runs downstairs with her bag and there’s a car waiting for her out front.”
“A car?”
“I didn’t get a look at it. Just black. And it took off. It might have been a boyfriend. I think she might have had a boyfriend, but she never had him here, not overnight. But the last thing she says is not to tell anybody anything about her, not to say where she went, but I don’t even know, so I guess I’m really not doing anything wrong by telling you.”
“I appreciate it,” Duckworth said. He finished off the second slice of banana bread and downed the last of his coffee. Smacked his lips with flourish.
“Whaddaya say we go have a look at Sarita’s room,” he said.
Twenty-two
“I want something done about that man,” Agnes Pickens said as she, her husband, Gill, and their daughter, Marla, entered the Pickens family home.
“Agnes,” Gill said, “the detective is just doing his job.”
“Why am I not surprised that you would take his side?”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s not a question of taking sides,” Gill said. “Duckworth has a murder to investigate, and he follows things where they lead.”
“He’s got no business following them to our daughter.”
“She had their goddamn baby!”
His voice bounced off the walls of the oversize foyer. Marla stood behind them, arms limp at her sides, her eyes dead.
“For God’s sake, Gill,” Agnes said, taking her daughter into her arms, shielding her as though her husband’s words might physically strike her. “That really helps.”
Marla’s arms remained motionless.
Agnes said, “You go up to your room, sweetheart. Why don’t you lie down? It’s been an exhausting day for you. We’re going to take care of this.” Turning to Gill, she said, “I just hope Bondurant knows what she’s doing.”
“I liked her,” Marla whispered. “I thought she was nice.”